Alumni Spotlight: Robert Czachorski
Even years after graduating from CEE, Czachorski still finds that his time spent at U-M impacted his day-to-day work life and helped to prepare him to enter the professional engineering world.
Two-time CEE alumnus and civil engineering consultant Robert Czachorski has always had a passion for innovation and technology, and he knew that civil engineering was the field where he could pursue that passion. After thirty years as a consulting engineer, Czachorski continues to apply his passion for civil engineering to his work on water resources systems, helping to advance and support southeastern Michigan communities.
After graduating from U-M CEE in 1994, Czachorski continued to live and work in the greater Ann Arbor area, finding rewarding work in collaborating with and serving the community. As a principal and partner at OHM Advisors in Livonia, Michigan, Czachorski works with key southeastern Michigan clients — such as the city of Ann Arbor, Oakland County and the Great Lakes Water Authority — to help communities improve their sewer and water systems. As a longtime southeast Michigan resident, Czachorski finds a particular reward in working with the communities where he has lived, worked and studied.
“I love working for clients in my community,” said Czachorski. “Ann Arbor is one of my favorite clients. Being on campus and being able to be a part of that culture is really rewarding.”
As a principal for some of OHM’s largest accounts, Czachorski helps the firm’s clients develop solutions to their problems, then assembles project teams and helps manage those ongoing projects. His specialization is in sewer collection systems — an expertise that lends itself to some of his biggest projects with OHM and the City of Ann Arbor.
“The biggest project we’ve worked on with the City is the master planning of their sanitary sewage collection system,” Czachorski explained. “We were also just selected to work on the City’s water distribution master planning. That’s a long-range plan to look at future growth and needs and so that they’re able to properly maintain and upgrade their water system.
“One of our biggest environmental functions as a firm is to help these communities,” Czachorski continued. “We study the system, we figure out what the problem is; and then we recommend improvements and help design and construct the solutions.”
Even years after graduating from CEE, Czachorski still finds that his time spent at U-M impacted his day-to-day work life and helped to prepare him to enter the professional engineering world.
“I’m one of those strange people who uses what I learned and studied in college every day in my work life,” Czachorski said. “I’m thankful for the wide variety of water resources and hydraulics classes I was able to take at CEE. The deep understanding of hydraulics and hydrology that I gained at U-M has given me a leg up in solving complex problems and innovating throughout my career.”
Also integral to his college experience was Czachorski’s role as a varsity track runner for four years of his undergrad. Though balancing his extracurricular responsibilities on the track team with his academics was tricky, it taught a valuable lesson.
“The experiences of balancing a busy athletic routine with a rigorous academic curriculum has provided a great template for work-life balance and time management,” Czachorski said. “They say that if you want to get something done, you should ask a busy person. My time at U-M was extremely busy, and that taught me to be efficient, focus on what is important and shed all the things that are not. That is how busy people get things done.”
And throughout his career, Czachorski has been very busy. Even outside of his work with OHM and the communities he has served, Czachorski’s career has been accomplished. A trailblazer in engineering technology, he is also the founder of H2OMetrics, a cloud-based water data analytics platform that he has implemented at OHM and half a dozen other municipalities in Michigan. The platform harnesses the data generated from water, sewer and other environmental systems and is used to analyze, process and manage the vast amount of flow metering, rainfall and water quality data. The platform also contains an innovative model for rainfall-runoff dynamics that Czachorski developed called the Antecedent Moisture Model.
“I’ve put all of my work on this topic in the public domain, published numerous papers on the topic, helped run an antecedent moisture model users group, and maintained a learning library at FlowPrediction.com,” Czachorski said. “I believe that this will be my greatest contribution to the civil engineer profession.”
Throughout his career, Czachorski has made contributions not only to the broader field of civil engineering but also to the U-M CEE community, serving as a Pelham Scholars Program mentor and a CEE 402 Senior Consultant, to name a few.
“There is something just magical about being part of the educational process at U-M,” Czachorski said.”The students have so much talent and energy. It’s invigorating to share knowledge with those who are so eager to learn.”
To those students who are unsure of their future, Czachorski would encourage them to consider civil engineering.
“It’s a very rewarding profession,” Czachorski said. “We build the roads, the bridges, the infrastructure, the sewers, the water systems that are the fabric of a community. We advance communities.”
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Mason Hinawi
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Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering